How often have we heard a bishop or a mainstream Catholic university faculty, in the course of political, social and economic commentary, offer any prescription or recommendation which suggests that they pay anything more than lip service, if even that, to the principle of subsidiarity?

In my own survey of such comments, critiques and proposals over a period of more than forty years, I would say that these opinion leaders have until recently spoken almost entirely in terms of the principle of solidarity (also misunderstood, by the way, as something that can be enforced by government), while the principle of subsidiarity has been completely ignored. And now that the latter principle is being so forcefully raised in competing circles, it seems that some in the Catholic establishment are starting to attempt a redefinition to escape its consequences.

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